PURRING RAIN by Ilana Gustafson

The rain is purring. It is a hold-on, slow-down kind of purr. A few wet birds do not abide. They busy themselves, vying for a spot at the feeder. The clouds draw curtains over the mountains. Dark before it’s dark. I want to light the candles, but that makes me think of the fire. So I sit like a
deep-sea creature in the pitch black, trying not to imagine everything that burned. Instead, the memory of my dream. A cat, singed and crawling on its belly away from the smoke. Smoke that billows like a cloud, but not a water-giving, life-affirming cloud. The suffocating kind. Arrhythmic patter of rain outside. A car’s rubber-tire-rush slashes through, and my thoughts
scatter. I turn on a lamp and, willing to light the stove, I make myself some tea.